This is not surprising at all.
In the late 70s and early 80s uranium in amazingly rich deposits was being processed in North Saskatchewan. They were throwing away ore that was better than the ‘good stuff’ in New Mexico and Colorado. I asked the mine operators if I could have a few hundred pounds of their ‘reject pile’. I figured I could have a pretty good time “salting” a few claim sites down south.
You can survey for uranium prospects with a scintillator and a helicopter. Rare earth exploration is much more painstaking (i.e. picks and shovels). Rare earths are often accompanied by uranium and or thorium in nature.
The thorium is the problem. Just radioactive enough for greenie law to make discarding it an expensive legal liability. Yet, absent development of thorium nuclear reactors, it’s worthless. Overcome the legal, political and (relatively easy) engineering issues to build thorium reactors would greatly improve the economics of rare earth production.